Download the Program Notes. Richard Strauss's Elektra, first performed in 1909, remains one of the most powerful and influential operas in the repertory. The first collaboration between Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra is an intense, modernist adaptation of the ancient Greek revenge drama, in which Electra and her brother Orestes plot to avenge their father Agamemnon's death. Building upon the mastery of the orchestra and musical form Strauss had achieved in his orchestral tone poems, Elektra, along with its predecessor Salome, broke new ground in opera as a musical investigation of human emotion and psychology.